Now this "law written within the heart" immediately and naturally suggests the idea of a Lawgiver who is over us. This felt presence of Conscience, approving or condemning our conduct, suggests, as with the speed of the lightning-flash, the notion of a Judge who will finally call us to account. This "accusing or excusing of each other," this recognition of good or ill desert, points us to, and constrains us to recognize, a future Retribution; so that some hope or fear of another life has been in all ages a universal phenomenon of humanity. It is affirmed, however, that whilst this capacity to know God may have been an original endowment of human nature, yet, in consequence of the fall, "the understanding and reason are weakened by the deterioration of his whole intellectual nature."[377] "Without some degree of education, man is _wholly_ the creature of appetite. Labor, feasting, and sleeping divide his time, and wholly occupy his thoughts."[378] [Footnote 377: "Institutes of Theology," vol. i. p. 15.] [Footnote 378: Ibid., vol. i. p. 271.] We reverently and believingly accept the teaching of Scripture as to the depravity of man. We acknowledge that "the understanding is darkened" by sin. At the same time, we earnestly maintain that the Scriptures do not teach that the fundamental laws of mind, the first principles of reason, are utterly traversed and obliterated by sin, so that man is not able to recognize the existence of God, and feel his obligation to Him. "_Though they_(the heathen) _knew God_ (διότι γνόντες), they did not glorify him as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imagination, and their foolish hearts were darkened. They changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature _more_ than the Creator." "And as they did not _approve of holding God with acknowledgment_, God delivered them over to an unapproving mind, to work those things which are not suitable." After drawing a fearful picture of the darkness and depravity of the heathen, the Apostle adds, "Who, _though they_ KNOW _the law of God_, that they who practise such things are worthy of death, not only do them, but even are well pleased with those who practise them."[379] The obvious and direct teaching of this passage is that the heathen, in the midst of their depravity and idolatry, are not utterly ignorant of God; "they _know_ God"--"they _know_ the law of God "--"they worship Him," though they worship the creature _more than_ Him. They know God, and are unwilling to "acknowledge God." "They know the righteousness of God," and are "haters of God" on account of his purity; and their worshipping of idols does not proceed from ignorance of God, from an intellectual inability to know God, but from "corruption of heart," and a voluntary choice of, and a "pleasure" in, the sinful practices accompanying idol worship. Therefore, argues the Apostle, they are "without excuse." The whole drift and aim of the argument of Paul